"Umineko Saku" English patch released

[ooa]

The English patch for Umineko When They Cry: The Symphony of Catbox and Dreams, the 8th-gen console release of Umineko, is now complete.
This release is the ultimate Umineko compilation, including Episodes 1 through 8, all content from Tsubasa, Hane, and Saku, as well as 4 new exclusive stories.
On top of that content, it includes several new features, such as some new music tracks, sprite expressions and openings, as well some major UI improvements compared to previous releases of the game.

Note that this release does not include features introduced by older fanmade versions such as Umineko Project or 07th-Mod, specifically: song subtitles, the Japanese Language Grimoire, NVL mode support, the abilities to mute individual characters and switch between multiple sprite/background sets. These were omitted as they are very minor and pretty much impossible to actually implement.

Unlike previous English Umineko releases, this one is not natively ported to PC or other open platforms. Instead, it is provided as a patch (a "romhack", if you prefer) for the Nintendo Switch version of the game, which can be used with a Switch emulator such as Ryujinx or Yuzu, or with a hacked Nintendo Switch device via Atmosphère. This was the only way I could actually provide readers with an enjoyable experience; my attempts at an actual PC port were laughably inferior to the real game. Please don't worry if you can't emulate/hack a Switch, as I am entirely certain that YouTube will have videos of the patch very soon.

I will not translate this to other languages or port it to other platforms, however you are welcome to try yourself. All of my code is open, and I wrote some basic documentation of the tools I used for translators.

You will find all the downloads, installation instructions, and the source code here.
Note that for legal reasons, you will have to acquire the base game NSP file yourself.

[Deca]

I don't think you should use this place to advertise your project... It's not very ethical.

As I said last year, the extras' translations weren't the best. I've spent the last few months following your updates and haven't noticed many relevant fixes, honestly. Check silverwolf-waltz's last update, there's a "Enju" there. Some lines don't match with the audio changes too in Tsubasa.

However, if Vit don't mind, we finished it first.

[ooa]

I had my doubts about the "advertising" matter, however I do believe that this project is of relevance to any Umineko fans. This isn't a commercial product (nobody's even accepting donations or anything), there is no real competition. All every single one of us wants is for Umineko fans to have the best experience with the story that is possible. The UP team have stated they won't be translating the extras, after all. I'd happily bring the extras over to the UP engine and make them part of Umineko Project itself, if I could. But it was far more complicated than patching the Switch game, as I have explained, so I just gave up on that. If the mods disagree with me putting this up here, they are of course free to outright delete my post, I'll hold no ill will towards that. However, there's an entire massive thread discussing 07th-Mod's Higurahsi port here already, so I don't think they would be mad at this.

It's true that the translations of extras aren't as good as those of the main story, though I haven't heard many complaints about their quality from people who've read through the patch so far -- most are happy to be able to read it in English at all. Still, most of these translations weren't created specifically for this project, they were borrowed from fan TLs of the different stories spread over the Internet and edited by me. But, as it stands, they are still the best English translations for those chapters that exist. I've tried to polish them as much as I could as a non-Japanese speaker. I did change some lines to better fit with the voices, fix some awkward English here and there, changed names and terminology to better match the main UP translation, but perhaps I did miss some stuff. Again, I don't speak Japanese. I'd only notice differences when they are extremely obvious. Some lines (mostly in EP7, not in the extras) were purposefully left in a state that doesn't match the voices at all because there's some absolutely insane censorship going on with them.

I'll fix the typo you've pointed out though (I haven't been able to do any work myself on Last Note specifically due to hardware problems and various other issues). If you have other concrete improvements to suggest, you are free to let me know via the Github issues tracker, or PR fixes yourself. I want to continue doing my best to fix any problems people find.

[Deca]

I have no intention of working with an inferior language, but I can send you some lines that I remember seeing that were wrong and remain wrong. Still, I stand by the suggestion I gave you last year about finding a good editor. Except for Diablo, the other two involved do not inspire much confidence due to different reasons.

[ooa]

The fact that you're randomly throwing around insults for zero reason whatsoever makes me believe your suggestions will not be in good faith and the "corrections" will probably not be real either and would instead be an attempt to undermine the integrity of the project, so I will refuse the offer. If real people find real issues I will fix them, but I'm not going to dig through a list of "suggestions" from someone being openly malicious against me and other project members, not to mention against the UP team and The Witch Hunt as well, since, guess what, all of those people speak English. So, uh, no thanks, bye.

[Deca]

I intended to help, but it seems that you have lost confidence in me only because I belittled the English language.
I have my personal reasons for not trusting the other names, but I prefer to remain silent about them.

Still, I will help with a single line. Good luck.

'ウェルギリアス@r@v66/WEL_00060.「バーロー！@|@y@k
'Virgilius@r@v66/WEL_00060."<Hello!>@|@y@k